In Your Arms
by xyzara
Summary: Dramione one-shot inspired by the prompt "Inagine person A of your otp dying in person B's arms."


**Disclaimer** : I do not own any part of the Harry Potter series. All rights belong to JK Rowling and Bloomsbury.

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Hermione sprinted towards the Hogwarts apparition boundary with blood on her tongue and her heart in her throat. A jet of green light grazed her elbow - her third brush with death that night - and she reflexively shot a few stunning curses in quick succession towards the caster while she ran. She heard branches crashing to the ground behind her, the soft thudding of a body, and then screams; Death Eaters filled the night with their rage as members of the Order slipped through the trees like minnows. The air around her hummed with raw magic, and for an interminable stretch of time all she could see were flashes of green, red, purple.

The screams suddenly ceased. But she kept running as fear pumped through her veins and told her not to stop until she knew she was safe.

Once she reached the boundary, she slowed to a jog, then allowed another ten seconds to pass before she risked a quick glance behind her. Wiping the sweat from her vision, she squinted and searched for a familiar streak of platinum and a blur of black robes.

But she saw nothing.

Her feet abruptly stopped on their own accord and she collapsed into a tree, gasping for breath. She turned around, with an air of desperation now, and she looked again. Rubbed her eyes harder. Squinted through the darkness. But only an eerie silence greeted her, received by the sound of her heart hammering one word like a metronome in allegro: _gone, gone, gone_.

He was gone.

She sprinted back across the border without so much as a second glance towards the castle. Her eyes scanned the forest as she backtracked through the dark path, blindly stumbling on roots and panting out curses. Where the hell did he go?

She thought back to the last thing he'd told her before they left Grimmauld Place: _"I'll be right behind you, I promise. Don't worry about me."_ But she'd known that she wouldn't ever need to worry about him because he never fell behind. She could always trust him to be by her side, cool and rational and always knowing what to do, how to react, which spell to cast first. He almost had an aura of invincibility around him. Mostly because he cared too much about himself, yes, but also because he was damn _good_. To think he had been hit...

She skidded to a halt when she spotted it - a dark heap of robes crumpled gracelessly to the side of the beaten path. Beneath the hood of the figure's cloak was a familiar mess of blond hair matted with blood. Hermione gasped out his name and rushed to his side, her hands trembling as she pressed her fingers against the cold skin of his neck to check his pulse.

He stirred and murmured hoarsely, "H'mione?"

Her eyes widened in alarm. "Draco," she whispered. She held his hand as she scanned his bloodied form. "Oh my god, oh my god, what happened? What've they done?"

Draco's face contorted into a grimace when she tried to move him into a sitting position against a tree. "They went after you. Couldn't drive them all away. Dolohov and his...bloody curse..."

"You defended me?" Hermione shrieked in a mixture of anger and bewilderment. "Against all of them? You idiot! You could've gotten killed! You were supposed to run until you reached the boundary! Did you even listen to me?"

Draco chuckled weakly, "Only you would be lecturing me when I'm about to die-"

"You are _not_ dying!" Hermione snapped, though her voice quivered. "You're just-"

She stopped when she caught sight of his robes.

"-badly wounded. Oh, Merlin..."

She frantically tugged his robes open to reveal his white shirt, a striking contrast against the blood that drenched it. For a fraction of a second, her head spun and an odd floating sensation took over her. She felt distant. He felt distant, too; she could faintly hear him calling her name, trying to get her attention and bring her back, but she could've been looking at him through a telescope for all it mattered; she was frozen with fear and could do nothing but stare at him blankly. His chest heaved with shallow breaths and his tattered shirt stuck plastered to his skin, a mass of ghostly white and ruby red. Her eyes travelled up and down his figure. It was almost...beautiful. She had never before noticed the ethereal quality of someone so close to death. His body, cold and smooth, could have been sculpted from marble.

Then the word _death_ slammed into her like a Cruciatus to the chest.

"Oh gods," she gasped. Her fingers jumped into action, and Draco suppressed a groan as she worked around the sticky fabric of his shirt. Once she had peeled it all away from his chest, she caught sight of his wounds glistening in the darkness and blanched. They were a hundred times worse than she'd expected.

She could sense Draco's gaze lingering on her panicked expression. "That hideous?" he croaked. When she didn't reply, incapable of forming words, his lips twisted in a strained smile. "t'least it wasn't my face," he said in a feeble attempt to sound vain.

Hermione tried not to imagine his pale, pointed features in a mangled mess of blood. She squeezed her eyes shut.

He was right. It could've been worse. This - the gashes on his body - could be fixed. They would leave scars, yes, but she could at least heal him and stop the bleeding.

She took a deep, determined breath to calm her nerves, and recalled everything she'd need to save him - starting with a clear and focused mind.

Right. First things first. She raised her wand and incanted "Expecto Patronum!", sending her otter bounding back towards the castle for help. Someone would surely see it and think to rescue her, and then she could bring Draco back to receive medical attention from Pomfrey.

For now, she'd try to heal him herself. After setting up a few cloaking and protection spells around the area, she turned her attention back to him and held out one hand.

"Accio Dittany!"

She snatched the vial once it flew out of her bag and applied all that was left to his chest. Draco hissed in pain as green smoke billowed from where the brown liquid sizzled into his skin. Once she used up the last of the Dittany, Hermione hastily performed a few healing spells, her voice breaking and tripping across the words she had incanted so many times before.

To her horror, neither the Dittany nor the spells made a difference. His blood continued to flow like a stream, snaking down his chest, pooling on his abdomen, and trickling into the dirt like rainwater from a gutter.

"Dolohov's latest invention." Draco tried to laugh it off as if it were simply a scratch, though that only led to him choking and coughing up blood. If possible, he grew even paler. "-no cure for it," he grunted.

Panic rose in Hermione's throat. "No, there has to be. I - I can fix this," her voice quaked, a promise built on desperation. He may have been right about the curse, but she couldn't give up. Not when his life was at stake.

Again, she ordered herself. She lifted her wand and tried every spell, every charm, every goddamn countercurse that she could think of. Yet, again, they failed to close his wounds.

"Hermione-"

"It has to work, there has to be a way, something has to work," she muttered to herself while she waved myriad spells in a frenzy. She could feel her heartbeat pounding away, allegro bumping a notch up to presto. "Why isn't it working? Dammit, it should be working!"

"Hermione, listen-"

"No, I can do this! Help will be here soon. Just, let me-"

"Please-"

"I can fix this, I promise, I can fix you-"

"H'mione, _stop_."

His order sounded like a tired gust of wind, and she stilled when she heard the defeat underlining it it.

"Stop," he said again, almost pleading.

She let out a strangled sound - a cross between a sob and a gasp, and buried her head in her hands. This was wrong. Draco never gave up. He clung onto life just as fiercely as she did. He was a survivor; he had managed to make it through four years of the war standing by her side. So why was he giving up now? She didn't understand. They had a whole future together planned. Once they defeated Voldemort, they would live together and get married and start a family and...

She dropped her wand. "Why?" she asked brokenly, "Why did you try to protect me? I told you to run, not fight. Why did you have fight?"

She felt his fingertips brush against the back of her hand. His eyelids lifted, heavy with the weight of living, and although his eyes were dim in the darkness of the forest, she could still make out the magnetic color she had fallen in love with over the years.

When he spoke, it was in a breathless rasp: "I've always been running. Always been afraid. But you don't understand, Hermione. I'd battle armies for you. Hell, I'd kill Voldemort himself."

Hermione's eyes watered. She understood more than he imagined, because she would've done the same for him if their places were swapped.

But she didn't want him to fight for her - not tonight. She didn't want his protection and she didn't need to witness his bravery to see how much he cared for her. She just wanted...him.

She bent down to press a kiss against his cool cheek. He caught her wrist with whatever remaining strength he had left, and his lips moved against the shell of her ear, mouthing three words that he didn't have the voice left to say.

She whispered them back to him, and she could feel his breathless laugh against her neck.

In the second that followed, his hand slipped away from her wrist. She felt him tremble in her arms.

"Draco?" she said in a small voice.

A dry sound escaped his throat. Hermione felt rather than heard him struggle to breathe, and her own chest ached; every shallow breath he inhaled was an arrow to her lungs.

"Draco, stay with me. Do you hear me?" Something warm and wet trickled down her cheek and she sniffled. Of course he didn't. But she had to pretend, for the sake of the remnants of her sanity, for the sake of keeping herself together. "Don't you dare leave me now. Someone should be here any minute now to help you, okay? Stay with me Draco."

She checked his pulse again. Faint.

With shaking arms, she pulled him closer to her and felt more tears pooling in her eyes. He was cold. Freezing. Shivers racked her spine and she suddenly couldn't move, stunned by the reality of it. _Do something,_ she thought to herself, but she could hardly think, could barely hear her own thoughts.

"Draco, please," her voice cracked at his name and she clutched him to her chest, wishing her body heat would seep into him and breathe the life back into his motionless form. "Come back," she whispered against his cheek over and over again until it became a prayer. "Please, please, please come back."

Time seemed elastic in the minutes she sat under the tree. She couldn't comprehend it. Surely he'd open his eyes in a minute and give her his typical knowing smirk. She could almost hear his teasing voice: _"You really thought I'd leave you like that? Merlin, Granger, you're so emotional."_ Surely the heart pressed against her chest would continue beating, as if it had never stopped, and surely his stormy grey eyes would glimmer again with mirth. Every atom in her body refused to believe that Draco, the only person left in her world, was —

Her heart thudded the word traitorously, but this time there was no sense of panic, only the sense of sinking anguish and betrayal because she lived and breathed while he couldn't. He was — he was without her, and she without him, and nothing in the world could piece together the part of her that had been ripped away by the sound of his last three words.

He was gone.

 _Gone._


End file.
